Pavel Jozef Šafárik

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Pavol Jozef Šafárik
Latin: Paulus Josephus Schaffarik; Hungarian: Pál József Safarik
CitizenshipKingdom of Hungary

Pavel Jozef Šafárik (

Slavists
.

Family

His father Pavol Šafárik (1761–1831) was a

Protestant clergyman in Kobeliarovo and before that a teacher in Štítnik, where he was also born. His mother, Katarína Káresová (1764–1812) was born in a poor lower gentry family in Hanková
and had several jobs in order to help the family in the poor region of Kobeliarovo.

P.J. Šafárik had two elder brothers and one elder sister. One brother, Pavol Jozef as well, died before Šafárik was born. In 1813, after Katarína's death, Šafárik's father married the widow Rozália Drábová, although Šafárik and his brothers and sister were against this marriage. The local teacher provided Šafárik with Czech books.

On 17 June 1822, when he was in Novi Sad (see below), P. J. Šafárik married 19-year-old Júlia Ambrózy de Séden (Slovak: Júlia Ambróziová; 1803–1876), a highly intelligent member of Hungarian lower gentry born in 1803 in modern-day Serbia.[2][3][4]

She spoke Slovak, Czech, Serbian and Russian, and supported Šafárik in his scientific work. In Novi Sad, they also had three daughters (Ľudmila, Milena, Božena) and two sons (Mladen Svatopluk, Vojtěch), but the first two daughters and the first son died shortly after their birth. Upon Šafárik's arrival in Prague, they had 6 more children, out of which one died shortly after its birth.[citation needed]

His eldest son

Southern Slavs
).

Life

Early years (1795–1815)

Pavel spent his childhood in the region of Kobeliarovo in northern

Gemer (Gömör) characterized by attractive nature and rich Slovak culture. He gained his basic education from his father. As P. J. Šafárik's son Vojtech put it later in his book (see Family
):

When, at the age of 7, his father showed him only one alphabet, he by himself hands down learned to read, and from then on he was always sitting on the stove and was reading. By the age of eight, he had read the whole Bible twice and one of his favorite activities was preaching to his brothers and sister, and to local people.

In 1805–08 Šafárik studied at a "lower

Protestant school which was just changed into a middle Latin school) in Rožňava (Rozsnyó), where he learned Latin, German and Hungarian. Since he did not have enough money to finance his studies, he continued his studies in Dobšiná
(Dobsina) for two years, because he could live there with his sister.

At that time, it was absolutely necessary for anyone who wanted to become a successful scientist in the Kingdom of Hungary (which included today's Slovakia) to have a good command of Latin, German, and Hungarian. Since the school in Rožňava specialized in Hungarian and the school in Dobšiná in German, and Šafárik was an excellent student and both schools had a good reputation, all prerequisites for a successful career were fulfilled as early as at the age of 15.

In 1810–1814 he studied at the Evangelical

Serbian culture
.

He graduated from the following branches of study: philosophy (including logic, metaphysics, mathematics, physics, economia ruralis, Latin style, comparative philosophy and history of the Kingdom of Hungary), politics and law (including jus naturae, jus privatum civile et criminale, scienciae politicae), and theology (including dogmatic and moral theology, hermeneutics, Greek, Hebrew, physics, medicine, natural law, state law and international law). The studies at this school were very important; since this was a largely German school, he was able to get a (partial) scholarship for a university in Germany.

He worked as a private tutor in the family of Dávid Goldberger in Kežmarok between 1812 and 1814, which he also did one year after the end of his studies in Kežmarok. His mother died in late 1812 and his father remarried 6 months later. His first larger work was a volume of poems entitled The Muse of

Tatras with a Slavonic Lyre
published in 1814 (see Works). The poems were written in the old-fashioned standard of the Moravian Protestant translation of the Bible that the Slovak Lutherans used in their publications with many elements from Slovak and some from Polish.

Germany (1815–1817)

In 1815 he began to study at the University of Jena, where he turned from a poet into a scientist. It was the wish of his father, who financed him, to study there.

He attended lectures in history,

Fichte, was observing current literature and studied classical literature. While there he translated into Czech the Clouds of Aristophanes (issued in the Časopis Českého musea [Journal of the Bohemian museum] in 1830) and the Maria Stuart of Schiller
(issued in 1831).

In 1816, he became a member of the Latin Society of Jena. 17 of Šafárik's poems written at this time (1815–16) appeared in the Prvotiny pěkných umění by

Johann Wolfgang Goethe
. Although he was an excellent student, Šafárik had to leave the University of Jena in May 1817 for unknown reasons (probably lack of money).

In 1817, on his way back home, he visited Leipzig and Prague. In Prague, where he was searching for a tutor job, he spent one month and joined the literary circle, whose members were Josef Dobrovský, Josef Jungmann and Václav Hanka, whom Šafárik thus got to know in person.

Return to homeland (1817–1833)

Between the summer of 1817 and June 1819, he worked as a tutor in Pressburg (Bratislava) in the well-known family of Gašpar Kubínyi.[5] He also became a good friend of the Czech František Palacký, with whom he had already exchanged letters before and who was also a tutor in Pressburg at that time. The town of Pressburg was a social and intellectual center of the Kingdom of Hungary at that time. In the spring of 1819, Šafárik befriended the important Slovak writer and politician Ján Kollár.

Before he left for the southern territories of the Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Serbia), Šafárik spent some time in Kobeliarovo and with his grandfather in Hanková. This was the last time Šafárik saw his native country.

Portrait of Šafárik done by the vojvodinian Slovak painter Karol Miloslav Lehotský

In April 1819, his friend

Slavonic languages
as a whole.

Bohemia (1833–1861)

In 1832 he finally decided to leave Novi Sad and tried to find a teacher or librarian job in

Prague University Library. In Prague, he published most of his works, especially his greatest work Slovanské starožitnosti ("Slavonic Antiquities") in 1837. He also edited the first volume of the Výbor (selections from old Czech writers), which appeared under the auspices of the Prague literary society in 1845. To this he prefixed a grammar of Old Czech
(Počátkové staročeské mluvnice).

In the papers collection Hlasowé o potřebě jednoty spisowného jazyka pro Čechy, Morawany a Slowáky ("Voices on the necessity of a united standard language for the Bohemians, Moravians and Slovaks") published by Ján Kollár in 1846, Šafárik moderately criticized Ľudovít Štúr's introduction of a new Slovak standard language (1843) that replaced the previously used Lutheran standard which was closer to the Czech language (the Slovak Catholics used a different standard). Šafárik – as opposed to most of his Czech colleagues – always considered the Slovaks a separate nation from the Czechs (e.g. explicitly in his works Geschichte der slawischen Sprache... and in Slovanský národopis) but he advocated the use of Slovacized Czech ("Slovak style of the Czech language") as the only standard language among the Slovak people.

During the

University of Prague, but resigned to the latter in 1849 and remained head of the university library only. The reason for this resignation was that during the Revolution of 1848–49 he participated at the Slavic Congress in Prague in June 1848 and thus became suspicious for Austrian authorities. During the absolutistic period following the defeat of the revolution, he lived a secluded life and studied especially older Czech literature and Old Church Slavonic
texts and culture.

In 1856/57, as a result of persecution anxieties, overwork, and ill health, he became physically and mentally ill and burned most of his correspondence with important personalities (e.g. with Ján Kollár). In May 1860, his

depressions made him jump into the Vltava river, but he was saved. This event produced considerable sensation among the general public. In early October 1860 he asked for retirement from his post as University Library head. The Austrian emperor himself enabled him this in a letter written by his majesty himself and granted him a pension, which corresponded to Šafárik's previous full pay. Šafárik died in 1861 in Prague and was buried in the evangelical cemetery in Karlín
Quarter.

Works

Wikisource has original works by or about:
Pavel Jozef Šafárik

Poetry

Scientific works

Ethnographic map "Slavic lands," done by Pavel Šafařík in 1842

Collected works & papers

  • Sebrané spisy P. J. Šafaříka 1–3 (Prague 1862–1863, 1865)
  • Spisy Pavla Josefa Šafaříka 1 (Bratislava 1938)

Recognition

A bust of Šafárik in Kulpin, Serbia

Annotations

References

  1. ^ a b c d Živan Milisavac (1971). Živan Milisavac (ed.). Jugoslovenski književni leksikon [Yugoslav Literary Lexicon] (in Serbo-Croatian). Novi Sad (SAP Vojvodina, SR Serbia): Matica srpska. p. 519.
  2. ^ Hanus 1895.
  3. ^ "Príspevok ku genealógii Pavla Jozefa Šafárika" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 November 2014. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  4. ^ "Révai lexicon No. 1:2" (PDF). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  5. ^ "Biografické kalendárium P . J. Šafárika" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 September 2014. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  6. ISBN 978-90-272-9235-3
    . In addition to books, it published the journal Serbski Letopis, founded two years earlier by Georgije Magarašević, Pavel Jozef Šafárik, and Lukijan Mušicki in Novi Sad, where Magarašević was professor and Šafárik the director of the Serbian gymnasium.

Sources

External links

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